CALIFORNIA SLEAZE

by Michelle Clifford and Bill
Landis

Candice Rialson’s Erotic AllurePETS(1974) Director: Raphael Nussbaum Pets is notorious and more than lives up to
its kinky reputation. Pets’ blatant focus on sadomasochism, indicated by its
startling ad campaign featuring the star, Candice Rialson, on her knees, in lip
gloss and a dog collar. This extreme campaign and the film’s fly by night
distributor (Burbank International) were factors in relegating Pets to what’s
known in exploitation parlance as a brief “specialty” run. Pets’ director,
Raphael Nussbaum, is one of the most enigmatic of exploitation directors and is
known for relatively few films. Nussbaum’s style would lead you to believe that
he works in pornography under a pseudonyn. The only other Nussbaum film in
recent memory – and this was over a decade ago – was W.A.R. (Women Against
Rape), in which low heeled brothers of Hollywood actors (Frank Stallone, Don
Swayze and Jerry Van Dyke) play rapists targeted by a women’s self defense
group. Of all Nussbaum’s films, Pets remains the most fully realized and best
remembered.

In Pets, Candice Rialson plays
Bonnie, a pretty young drifter with no family and only her looks to get her by.
Her sexy stray kitten vulnerability attracts a succession of freaks willing to
keep her. Bonnie winds up in high intensity situations with severe individuals
that come to sudden bitter ends. The looming threat of being thrown out into the
street at any minute or an insane outburst of violence constantly puts Bonnie on
the defensive, making her as confrontational as she is vulnerable.

S&M iconography is the film’s driving force. Pets kicks off with a female
dominance scenario familiar from the artwork of Eric Stanton and Bill Ward.
Bonnie hooks up with Pat, a sassy, psychopathic, knife wielding black
scamstress. Together, they hitch a ride off of a thrillseeking middle aged
married man. They leave him bound, humiliated and robbed. Bonnie taunts the old
fart, jealously calling him his “wife’s lapdog,” but then throws sex on the guy,
anyway.

Bonnie is then picked up by
Geraldine, a lesbian painter, who spies her stealing fruit near the beach.
Geraldine turns Bonnie into her model and plaything. As inevitably is the case
where a homosexual keeps a heterosexual drifter, Bonnie grows bored, surly and
sexually unsatisfied. In desperation, Bonnie fucks a poor dope who breaks into
Geraldine’s house. Geraldine shoots the horny B&E artist in a fit of jealous
rage.

Bonnie flees to to her final, most warped benefactor, Vincent, a wealthy,
insouciant art connoisseur. Vincent had greatly admired and purchased
Geraldine’s portrait of Bonnie, so why not own the real thing? He’s obsessed
with collecting paintings, zoo animals and females. Vincent trains his “pets” to
make them submissive. He gives Bonnie a taste of the whip, leaving marks, before
making her the centerpiece of the private zoo that he keeps in his mansion’s
basement. She languishes on a velour bed in a giant cage surrounded by tigers,
German Shepards and other aggressive creatures. Vincent carries the looming
threat of Sadean zoophilia. He isn’t having sex Bonnie, so there’s the
degenerate hint that he’d enjoy some of the most depraved S&M voyeurism –
watching Bonnie fucking one of the animals.

Pets relentlessly fulfills its
prurient promises. There is a great deal of dressing up and down by Ms. Rialson.
Although the narrative is visually propelled, Pets is filled with pointed
dialogue that constantly compares humans to animals in a manner usually heard in
dominance houses. (The movie was based on a play). The S&M depictions are
brief but graphic, and resemble the kinkiest peep booth loops. The
straightforward sex scenes have the feel of early 1970s hardcore, down to the
grinding organ music and purposefully raunchy camera placement.

Pets also has its special erotic aura because it’s the debut of exploitation
icon Candice Rialson. Rialson was the embodiment of the blonde, wholesome, yet
sexually aggressive California beach girl. She appeared in innumerable New World
releases like Candy Stripe Nurses. However, even in the exploitation world, one
wrong part can derail a career. Candice Rialson disappeared from view after the
faux pas of appearing in Chatterbox, a barely released AIP comedy about a girl’s
problems with her talking pussy. Chatterbox was an R-rated xerox of the landmark
French hardcore skinflick, Pussy Talk, and was directed by Tom DeSimone, who’d
also known for making gay porn. Look again at Jackie Brown and you’ll see
Bridget Fonda playing Candice Rialson.

Pets was the surprise sleeper at the SLEAZOID EXPRESS film festival held last
June at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco playing to an
audience consisting mostly of couples. The local gay press appreciated the camp
aspects of the film and affectionately referred to it as an “S&M soap
opera.”

For those desiring to keep Pets in the privacy of your home, Tapes of Terror offers the theatrical print followed by its sleazy sexy fuck
me trailer.